Do you know what’s interesting about the current free-for-all for mobile operating system dominance? You guessed right! New entries! We are sure you have heard of The Firefox OS by Mozilla? Sure you have!

Launching a new mobile OS is a difficult project since the market leaders, Android and iOS, have such a big lead. Even Microsoft, with its near-infinite financial resources and vast ecosystem of complementary products, has struggled over time to gain traction. With the rising standards technology giants have set for themselves as they duke it out for market dominion, new entrants will have to face what I call a chicken-and-egg problem: developers don’t want to write apps for a platform without many users, while users don’t want to buy a phone without many apps.

First off, to sustain any early momentum, Mozilla will need to convince developers to build Firefox OS apps. Firefox OS apps will be built entirely using HTML5. According to Mozilla, the thousands of developers who already know how to build Web apps will be able to build Firefox OS apps with minimal additional training. And because they’re built on open standards, Mozilla hopes that Firefox OS apps will work reasonably well on other platforms that support HTML5—which is to say, all of them.

Thanks to ArsTechnica, we know the Firefox OS architecture has three layers, dubbed “Gonk”, “Gecko”, and “Gaia”. Gecko is the rendering engine at the core of the Firefox browser. Below Gecko sits Gonk, a bare-bones Linux distribution derived from Android. Above Gecko sits Gaia, a touchscreen user interface not too different from those found on other mobile operating systems. It makes sense that Mozilla would choose to make Gonk a derivative of Android because many device makers already know how to make devices that run Android. According to Mozilla “If you’re an OEM, you already have basically all the capabilities to run our system.” It is also worthy to note that since Firefox OS apps are essentially just Web apps, app developers are not required to use Mozilla’s app store at all. A developer can distribute a Firefox OS app as a “hosted app,” delivered from any Web server.

Firefox OS looks familiar to anyone who’s used Android and iOS: when you turn it on, you’re faced with the familiar grid of apps. Swiping left and right slides in other pages of apps. And across the bottom of each page is a fixed set of four apps: the phone dialer, a text-messaging app, the Firefox browser, and the camera app. As with iOS, swiping to the leftmost screen launches a search app. But unlike iOS, this search app is wired not just to your own apps but also to the Firefox Marketplace and to the Web at large — remember, this is a browser-based OS. If you find an app you like in the search results, you can pin it to one of your screens for easy future access. Firefox OS comes with a range of built-in apps such as Facebook and Wikipedia, and even mapping services. A long-press on the home button invokes a task switcher so you can juggle among open apps.

A contacts app lets you open up a screen full of information about people you know. It serves as a hub to phone them, send e-mail or text messages, or check their Facebook walls. Facebook integration also lets people import their contacts; Mozilla plans to add import mechanisms for services like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail — something it knows how to do by virtue of its Thunderbird e-mail software for PCs.

A camera app, which also is accessible from the lock screen, has tabs for taking photos or videos, and it’s got a link to the built-in gallery app. That app lets you crop photos, apply some basic color filters, adjust contrast, and take actions like sharing photos on Facebook or by Bluetooth wireless networking.

It feels so much like an earlier version of Android. It’s definitely good, though, that Firefox OS can get a running start in the app ecosystem by mobilizing the vast army of Web programmers — programmers who might well be happy they can reach Firefox OS customers without having to jump through nearly as many hoops as the Apple App Store or Google Play present. It is already available of several phones such as the ZTE Firefox Phone, Keon and Peek by Geeksphone. Firefox OS should be fully open to all by 2014 and if successful, it should change the way we use the Web. We are used to visit websites but Firefox OS will bring an era where we will be using Web apps more than Websites. Ubuntu for Phones will also support Firefox OS to help bring in this change.

As if the war for what device dominates the 7 inch mini tab form factor was not cruel enough, technology giants Google decided to play another entry with their new Nexus 7, which became available since yesterday, July 30th.

The new Nexus 7 features a raft of improvements over last years Nexus 7; even though they practically look almost the same. First to mention would be that unlike the former Nexus 7, this one comes with the latest update of the Android OS (Jelly Bean 4.3) which of a truth is not that big of a difference really except that you can now have separate customizable spaces, including personal homescreens, wallpapers, apps and storage; which is an appealing idea. So, those whose tablets usually get in the hands of others do not have much to worry about anymore when it comes to people tampering with stuff. It features a 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Processor with an Adreno 300 400Mhz, which in simpler terms means the tablet should run pretty fast. there is also 2GB of RAM, a 5MP rear facing camera, 1.2MP front facing camera, Bluetooth 4.0LE, Wireless charging and a new HDMI slim port. With all of that for just about $30 extra, it is sure that comparing sister Nexus devices would lead to some level of unfairness.

Even though the 7 inch screens of both devices are typically same, the new Nexus 7 runs at 323 PPI which is ridiculously sharper than the previous one at 216PPI. This display is one key feature that holds the retina-less iPad mini to question (well, of course until apple decides to release an iPad mini with retina display). Watching movies on the new Nexus 7 is quite commendable honestly; and your Android OS has never looked crispier on any other tablet. The speaker sound on the new Nexus 7 is also improved, and thanks to its thinner design, it even weighs lighter than the previous. With up to 9 hours of HD video playback and 10 hours of web browsing or e-reading, there’s plenty of juice to get you through the day. And very much unlike the iPad, The new Nexus’ slim and lightweight design makes playing games much less strenuous to the wrists.

A truth remains that the new Google Nexus 7 champions the small tablet market for the meantime. A downside to the device would be that there is no SD card slot but its cheaper price range and crispy sharp HD display would give anyone with an iPad mini a run for his money. Google’s second shot at the Nexus 7 isn’t very groundbreaking in terms of innovation but the price is very inviting to tablet newbies. If you owned the previous Nexus 7, then this is certainly a worthwhile upgrade.

When I encountered the idea of PC gaming coming to a gaming handheld, I thought about all of the possible problems that could come up. Hardware issues would be one and software and memory space could be another. PC games are known to pack more than a punch when it comes to power hardware requirements that affect even power management. How can a handheld possibly deliver exceptional graphical textures and control all of its features in the palm of my hand? Furthermore, not just any PC game – MY PC games – without being just another PlayStation or Nintendo based handheld.

At The CES 2013, Visual computing technology giants Nvidia sought to answer that question with their PC dedicated handheld system called Nvidia Shield which, according to reports, would be available in The United States and Canada by the end of July this year after it was slated for earlier. But is it something indeed to look forward to ?

The Nvidia Shield will house a 5 inch, 720p (1280X720 @ 294ppi) multi-touch, retinal display touchscreen attached to a game controller. Honestly, it feels so much like an Xbox 360 controller (just bulkier) with an Nvidia home button and a few other design differences. The screen actually looks good till you place it side by side with a full 1080p screen though. So it should make you wonder why you would want this somewhere around your PC screen which could deliver much crispier images. Then again, having a wireless handheld that runs your PC games could prove convenient on specific occasions. It’s got Android too; so you can play tons of available games for Android from Google Play store which seems cool with the touchscreen and controller.

It will run the Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean mobile operating system with a custom 72-core Nvidia GeForce GPU, a 1.9GHz quad-core cortex A-15 CPU and 2Gb of RAM. So it’s clear that Nvidia did their best to pack a lot into the hardware. All of these translates to beautiful graphics that should maintain snappy movements and lag-free gameplay for PC favorites such as Borderlands 2, Batman: Arkham City, Resident Evil 6, Metro: Last Light, Dishonored and others.

As at now, not just any game can be streamed to the Nvidia Shield. Only selected games on Steam, the online multiplayer communications platform can be played via PC streaming with 802.11n-2009 2X2 MIMO wireless connectivity. This aims to provide high-bandwidth and ultra-fast wireless for seamless game streaming so, the Nvidia Shields ability to stream games live from your PC is not the possible issue to contend with. The real issue is that there are PC system hardware requirements that must be met before the device can stream from the PC. Nvidia announced these requirements to be:

GPU: GeForce GTX 650 or higher desktop GPU (Notebook GPUs are not supported at this time)

Routers: 802.11a/g router (minimum). 802.11n dual band router (recommended). A list of recommended routers will be provided at launch.

Nvidia will use the H.264 encoder built into GeForce GTX 650 or higher GPU along with special streaming software integrated into an upcoming version of GeForce Experience to stream games from the PC to the gaming handheld over the user’s home Wi-Fi network with ultra-low latency. Gamers will now be able to use the Nvidia Shield as the controller and display for their favorite PC games as well as for Steam Big Picture; enabling gamers to get a GeForce GTX PC gaming experience anywhere in their home Wi-Fi network.

Besides its wireless abilities, the Nvidia Shield will feature mini-HDMI output port, micro-USB 2.0, a MicroSD storage slot and a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack with microphone support. It will also have 16Gb internal flash memory, a 3-Axis gyroscope and accelerometer. It boasts of a rather good battery life lasting for about 20 hours while streaming.

As a gaming handheld with such abilities, do not expect the game to come for cheap (it’s announced to be at $349) so low end PC users who have not yet met (and don’t exactly plan to meet) the PC system requirements would be buying an Android device with an Xbox lookalike controller for quite a lot of money. Surely, mobility does come with a price but playing the games only in one’s house or around it using a wifi connection is not really the idea of mobility to many. The Nvidia Shield is indeed a daring new entry on a new field and we are more than excited to see how this entry influences technology today.

It is no news that the Samsung Galaxy series of smartphones have changed the way we view mobile phone technology today; rivaled only by the Apple iPhone and a few others. Everyone was very content with the revolutionary Galaxy S3 smartphone and with the lasting impressions its predecessors had, everyone would expect the new Samsung Galaxy S4 to be from outta space.

A straight to the point fact is that Samsung did not disappoint with the unveiling of the S4 – a phone boasting specs to further establish Samsung’s dominance of the mobile world. It’s a 5-inch beast, packing a full HD screen, a searingly powerful quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, a host of Samsung software extras, a 13-megapixel camera and 4G LTE connectivity for super fast data speeds.

Screen & Design

Taking a look at the Samsung Galaxy S4 from the front, you’ll have a tough time telling it apart from the S3. Samsung has a bunch of new sensors scattered around the Galaxy S4’s body, but the general layout of controls is largely unchanged. Below the Screen, we find the typical physical Hardware sandwiched between the capacitive menu and back keys as on the Galaxy S3.

There’s some extra functionality upon a long press too – the Menu key handles Google Now, while the Home key brings up the task switcher. Pressing and holding the back button brings the side bar for the Multi- window feature (if it’s enabled), and if you click the home key twice the Samsung S voice virtual assistant kicks in.

The traditional ambient light and proximity sensors are joined by an IR gesture sensor, which enables the cool Air gestures in applications such as the web browser and music player. There’s also a 2.1 megapixel front-facing camera for video calls and a status LED. The volume rocker is on the left side of the Samsung Galaxy S4, while the power/lock key is on the right. Despite the proper camera upgrade on the Galaxy S4, the new flagship is still missing a dedicated camera key; and though the volume rocker can be used for snapping photos, it can’t quite match a two-stage button.

The top of the Galaxy S4 features the 3.5mm audio jack, the secondary microphone and the IR blaster that allows you to use the smartphone as a remote control for your home appliances. At the bottom, sits the primary mic alongside the microUSB port which is used for both data connections and charging. Not only does it support USB host, The Samsung Galaxy S4 also comes with support for the new MHL 2.0, enabling 3D 1080p output and TV connections without an external power source. The back of the Samsung Galaxy S4 is where the 13 megapixel FullHD- capable camera lens is located. As on the Galaxy S3, the LED flash is right beside it, but the loudspeaker grille has been moved to the bottom left edge of the device

One of the most important updates that the Samsung Galaxy S4 brings is the new 5 inch Super AMOLED screen of 1080p resolution. While it does have a PenTile matrix, the 441 ppi pixel density makes sure you enjoy the screen. Its impressive contrast and almost perfect viewing angles make everything on the screen pop, regardless of your viewpoint. The color saturation is beyond the reach of any LCD out there, which makes even the dullest of images appear remarkably vibrant. For non-fans of the over-saturated look of AMOLEDs, Samsung gives you the option to tune down the saturation to more natural levels and enjoy the best of both worlds. There’s a dedicated Adobe RGB setting that gets this done.

Interface, Software and Apps

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is powered by Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean – the latest release of the Google platform available at the moment – and a laundry list of new TouchWiz features. The Galaxy S4 combines the best of both worlds and while it seems familiar, there’s plenty new below the surface – so much in fact that you’d need a couple of days just to get accustomed to all the phone has to offer:

We start with the lockscreen, which features the new lockscreen widgets introduced with Android 4.2, though Samsung fiddled with them a bit. The default lockscreen shows the time along with a personal message overlaid on beautiful photos pulled from TripAdvisor (with text at the bottom about where the photo was taken). Samsung replaced the water ripples by a lens flare effect, if you prefer, you can switch back to the old one or disable it all together. Another cool feature is the Quick glance option we first saw on the Samsng Galaxy Note 2 which uses the proximity sensor to detect you reaching for the device and lights up the screen that shows the time, missed call and message counters, battery charge and music track info.

At the top is the notification area which offers quick toggles (five or eight in landscape mode) to enable and disable features. There are more than five toggles, you can swipe horizontally to get to the others. Or you can tap the new button that reveals a grid of all the shortcuts, 20 in total. You can rearrange this grid (the top row toggles are always visible). A two finger swipe directly opens the grid of toggles.

The Galaxy S4 comes with the multi-window feature. This allows the use of apps (two apps) side by side on the screen and you can adjust the division line giving one app more space; something similar to the “snap-in” function of Windows 8. Only compatible apps can be used with the multi-window, and that means mostly the ones that come preinstalled on the phone. You can move the small arrow that brings up the drawer with the multi- window apps to make it easier to reach with your thumb. You can also move the whole drawer to the other side of the screen. The settings menu has been redone in the latest TouchWiz version. Instead of a scrollable grid of icons and sections Samsung has went with a tabbed interface. On top you get four tabs – Connection, My device, Accounts and More. you can find relative features in their corresponding place – display, for instance, is in the My Device tab. It makes navigating the settings menu much faster and more intuitive.

With the Galaxy S4 comes a lot of advanced features:
The first is Air View, which debuted on the Galaxy Note 2 and worked with the S Pen. There’s no S Pen on the Galaxy S4, or a need for it because the phone can detect your finger hovering over the screen. This enables information preview, previewing videos just by pointing to a spot in the timeline, moving to the next track in the music player by hovering over the next button (works with previous button too), previewing folders, speed dial contacts, and even magnifying links in web pages. Air view detects fingers 1cm away from the screen. Another set of “air” features are the Air Gestures. Quick Glance is one of them, but there’s more. The rest of the air commands are triggered by waving your hand over the Galaxy S4. Air Gestures turns the S4 into a mini-Kinect. Air Gestures can detect your hand up to 7cm and might prove useful in some situations. The sad part to this feature is that it only supports native apps and third party apps will not work with them (inclusive of Google Chrome that comes preinstalled on the phone). The familiar Smart Stay and Smart Rotate features are enabled too. Smart Scroll is one of the two new features on the Galaxy S4. It allows you to scroll up and down by tilting the phone or by tilting your head. The second new feature is simpler and more useful – Smart Pause. While watching a video, it uses the front- facing camera to track your face and will automatically pause the video when you look away. Look back and the screen and the playback continues.

Camera and Video

If the promise of the Samsung Galaxy S4’s 13-megapixel images doesn’t wow you, Samsung is hoping that its refreshed interface and enhanced features will. Perhaps the face and will automatically pause the video when you look away. Look back and the screen and the playback continues.

If the promise of the Samsung Galaxy S4’s 13-megapixel images doesn’t wow you, Samsung is hoping that its refreshed interface and enhanced features will. Perhaps the most out-there would be the dual-shot mode, which takes photos and video from both the front and rear facing cameras, and combines them into one. The background shows the capture from your main camera, while the foreground — whatever you take from the front-facing camera — lays on top. You
can choose to change the window size and shape on top, say a postcard stamp, an oval, or a simple window. You can also swap camera positions so that rear-facing gives you the inset and the front-facing image forms the background. More new modes include Sound & amp; Shot, which takes a picture and captures up to 9 seconds of audio and Drama Shot, which combines all the actions from a burst shot into a single frame. If someone is jumping, for instance, you see all stages of the leap in one shot. Then there’s Cinema Photo, which lets you animate just one portion of a video and keep the rest static, and Eraser mode, which can erase an unwanted person from a shot. You’ll also find Story Album, which gathers friends into a single photo album. You can add more location-based detail, and you can print any album through self-publishing platform Blurb.

As for battery life, the Samsung Galaxy S4 is packed a large 2,600mAh , but also a larger screen and even more features to compromise performance. Smart Stay and S Voice both drain the battery more quickly.

Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy S smartphones have always been a dominant force in the smartphone world and with the release of the Galaxy S4, Samsung is here to stay at the top. With such stunning features already discussed, this phone is a beast! Possible downsides of the phone would be its wallet shrinking price, its plastic design and the fact that there’s no FM radio. If you’re interested in a super phone, a strong gaming phone or possibly the ‘best’ android phone there is… the Samsung Galaxy S4 is surely the phone for you!

Combining incredible photography with style and power, Sony really are not only competing in art and beauty anymore, they are taking the bazookers to the war front. The Xperia Z is a real master/power piece.

Being one of the new Z Xperia line smartphones by Sony, which was announced at the CES 2013 show, set to be released before April; it is the first smartphone with high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) full HD video and, at the moment, the phone with the highest resolution front facing camera at 2.2MP. Here are the goodies, Xperia Z will be bringing to our pocket (shortly after draining our wallets :p).

Camera

It has both rear and front facing cameras, with the rear Camera being 13.1MP in resolution, with a back-side illuminated sensor with LED flash and Sony’s Exmor RS sensor, thereby making it the world’s first smartphone with high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) full HD video (< >wiki). The rear camera can shoot 1080P videos at 30FPS.

Its front facing camera is 2MP, which also is the highest resolution of any phone front facing camera.

Design

It will have 3 colour variants, black purple and white. It is lsightly longer and wider than the ZL, it is however thinner and more sleek looking, albeit its glassy cover may reduce grip, it is unknown how sturdy and strong it is when dropped.

Sensors and Other Features

The mobile comes equipped with the usual motion, orientation, light sensors; noteworthy it also feature both GPS and GLONAS, a trend in the newest devices.

Software

The Xperia Z’s default OS will be Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and it is expected to have the regular Sony apps preinstalled.
Overall the Xperia Z is a very powerful mobile phone, the incredible features greatly reflects in its proposed price. Expect the Z line of devices to start hitting our bill boards.

The Good

Very powerful, and with a good better pricing system, it a may topple the Iphone.
Supports both GPS and GLONAS.

The Bad

Please Note Ratings and Scores are absent as device has not yet been released, and may be subjected to some unexpected modifications, full review and score will be given after released as competing products are considered when rating devices at Nijaspecs.

Following the success of the very Cheap but powerful Nexus 7, Google released the successor of its legendary device. It was released fairly mid-way in November, 2012. The device is the successor to the commercially successful nexus 7. There was a change in developer/manufacturer partnership as the Nexus 10 was developed by Google and Samsung, you can’t help but wonder why Asus did not reprise their role as manufacturer even with the archived commercial success.Will Nexus 10 be commercially successful in Nigeria?

Processor and GPU (10/10)

Featuring <Must be linked to wiki< Samsung Exynos 5250 system on chip>> a dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 processor clocked at 1.7 GHz, means the NEXUS clearly leaves up to its expectations in processing power.

A quad-core ARM Mali T604 GPU means games and videos are rendered smoothly on its incredibly large WQXGA resolution.

Memory and Storage (8/10)

The Nexus 10 has a 16G and 32G internal storage capacity, no sd card slot for extending memory. It also comes equipped with 2G RAM, although it is unlikely you’ll run a single app that’ll consume 60% of the RAM in an instance, you will definitely notice the amount of apps that are kept alive even after focus is lost for a long time. Nexus 10 is FAST!

DISPLAY AND RESOLUTION (9/10)

Features a crisp 10.1-inch LCD with capacitive multi-touch touchscreen, with 2560×1600 display resolution, highest by any tablet in 2012>>(linked to WIKI) and as expected of every Samsung manufactured device, it features a scratch resistant Gorilla Glass 2<<Read about Gorrilla Glass 3 here>> (Nexus 7 corning fit, 10 corning Gorilla)

CAMERA (7/10)

Features two cameras, A sharp 5MP rear camera, for those people who don’t feel shy to cover events with a tablet (I for one, I’m not a fan of that, recording with a tab looks very awkward in every perspective K). The rear camera is capable of recording full 1080P videos at 30FPS. The inbuilt camera app also supports the usual features such as autofocus, face detection and geotagging etc and a ~2MP front facing camera, for video caling and skype.

CONNECTIVITY (7/10)

Features a Bluetooth 4.0 and WIFI for data exchange and internet connectivity, It also features a dual side NFC for use in Android beam. Like the initial models of its predecessor, it also lacks cellular connectivityL.

Design (Score 9/10)

The Nexus 10 is 8.9 mm in girth, 263.9 mm long, 177.6 mm wide, it weighs 603 g. The rear of the device comprises a smooth, plastic surface a very conspicuous “nexus” tag, and a less conspicuous “Samsung” tag. The volume control buttons and the power button are at the top of the device and a 3.5mm headphone jack, microUSB port on the devices left hand side. On the right lies the microHDMI port while the magnetic pogo pin used for docking and charging are at the bottom of the device.

OTHERS (10/10)

Nexus 10 comes equipped with the usual gravitation, motion and orientation sensing devices; an accelerometer, gyroscope; barometer, magnetometer and a digital compass; a proximity sensor and an ambient light sensor are also present. Like its predecessor, it also features an in built microphone. It’s equipped with a GPS and GLONASS, yeah, it has supports both so you can never get lost since both already cover the globe; you are doubly insuredJ.

SOFTWARE (10/10)

The device comes equipped with stock Android 4.2 JellyBean. Like the Nexus line, its boot loader is unlocked by defaultJ. It also comes with preinstalled with all Google apps.

As expected of every successor, the Nexus 10 is more powerful than its predecessor, but the nexus devices have clearly been out sold by galaxy line of Android devices in Nigeria, even with their cheaper price.

Overall: ~8.75 / 10

Overall the Nexus 10 is a very good device and follows well in the tradition of its predecessor, providing easy OS customization at cheaper than believable price.

Why this Device Can Be Successful in Nigeria

Relatively cheap: although much more expensive than its predecessor, the Nexus 10 is relatively cheaper than devices of its class(16 GB: US$399 and 32 GB: US$499)

Powerful hardware

Why this device can’t be successful in Nigeria

Nexus device advert and promotion is very poor in Nigeria, Samsung, Nokia and Sony go considerable length to create awareness about their devices in Nigeria. (Being a fan of Google, I’ve never seen a Nexus bill-board on a popular expressway L)

Not as nearly as cheap as Nexus 7, yet lacking Cellular support

Given the lack of cellular network, the device lacks carrier promotion, reason why you don’t get text messages from carrier about discounted rate.

Many of us reading this post are most likely to have asked, pondered and maybe dreamed about the question at least at one time or the other. Others were put on the spot with it and some lucky people didn’t really need to bother since someone else helped them out in making the silent, salient yet important choice between the two prevailing forms of mobile technology that has swept the whole world all too sudden.

Buying a Tablet or Laptop isn’t an easy choice. You need to be clear about your requirement in order to decide between them; except you have money to buy both which, from the Nigerian perspective, doesn’t seem to be a likely option in most cases. Surely there are extreme advantages of having both (I use both actually so I can tell) but nevertheless, it does make one wonder about the real decisions to make before you go ahead with either of the two. This post is aimed at helping even you to understand the main differences to consider as clearly as possible.

Keyboard and input

The most obvious difference between a tablet and a laptop is the lack of a keyboard. Tablets rely solely on a touch interface on the screen for all input. This is fine when it involves mainly pointing, dragging or tapping to navigate around a program. It can also pass off to be a very savvy way of getting things done. Tablets give you full control of the screen, features and applications. By using your finger or a stylus, you can directly touch the screen to make gaming more interactive, and the hands-on approach provides a more tactile experience than a mouse for drawing and illustrating. The problems come in when you have to input text into a program when such as an email or document. Since they have no keyboard, users are required to type on virtual “touch” keyboards that have varying layouts and designs. Most people cannot type as quickly or as accurately on a virtual keyboard and this could pose as a really annoying experience. Users do have the option of adding an external Bluetooth keyboard to most tablets to make this more like a laptop but it adds costs and peripherals that must be taken with the tablet.

Design and battery

The design of all the laptops is almost the same, that is, they have a “clamshell” design. There may be various colors, back panels and textures that are available, but… the basic design remains the same; very much unlike tablets. Aside from some hefty price tags, you must take special precautions in the care of your tablet; not like this does not apply to the laptop itself but as a tablet may have a durable body, the touchscreen display is exposed. If the touchscreen is damaged, your device could become useless. You can buy a case to protect the screen, but these are not included with the product and require a separate purchase. Compared to laptop computers, tablets are small and smart. Most tablets offer anywhere from a 7-inch to a 10-inch display screen and weigh less than 1 pound. You can store all your music, capture photos or videos, video chat and even read books on their built-in eReaders. Truly ideal for the on the go, take around personality.

Tablets are designed for efficiency because of the low power requirements of their hardware components. In fact, the majority of the interior of a tablet is taken up by the battery. In comparison, laptops use more powerful hardware. The battery component of the laptop is a far smaller percentage of the laptops internal components. Thus, even with the higher capacity battery of laptops, they do not run as long as a tablet. Many of the tablets right now can run up to ten hours of web usage before require a charge. The average laptop would only run for roughly three to four hours with a few systems able to stretch it out to eight hours but that still less than a tablet. This means that tablets can achieve all day usage which few laptops can achieve.

Storage

In order to keep their size and costs down, tablets have had to rely on the new and pretty much more reliable solid state storage memory as a means to store programs and data. While these have the potential for faster access and low power usage, they have one major disadvantage in the amount of files they can store at the moment. Most tablets come with configurations that allow between 16 and 64 gigabytes of storage. By comparison, most laptops still use traditional but more fragile hard drives that hold far much more data. Extremely affordable netbooks still have 160 gigabytes of storage which allows for ten times the amount of data as the most affordable tablets. This won’t always be the case though as some laptops have moved to solid state drives as well and may have as little as 64GB of space. However, we can predict that solid state drives will be the future of storage computing which, if you ask me, could wipe off the ever exasperating hard disk problem laptops today face.

Power

Since most tablets are based on extremely low powered processors, they will generally fall behind a laptop when it comes to computing tasks. Of course, a lot of this will depend on how the tablet or laptop is being used. For tasks like email, web browsing, playing video or audio, both platforms will typically work just as well as neither requires much performance. Things get more complicated once you start doing more demanding tasks. For the most part, multitasking or graphics performance is typically better suited with a laptop but not in all cases.

Even though it is possible for a tablet version of a certain software to have similar functions as its desktop version, it is expected that the desktop version would have more capabilities. But again, while traveling, if you are having some sort of work to be done, then tablets are a decent choice as most tablets have sync properties that help us to access our files from anywhere across the world.

The software that runs on a laptop or tablet can be vastly different in terms of capabilities. Assume that a tablet is running Windows 7 for example. It can theoretically run the same software as a laptop but will likely be slower or have less features of a sort of the other. Major tablet platforms available right now are Android, iOS, Blackberry and the new Microsoft Windows 8 RT which require applications specific to their operating systems. There are tons of programs available for each of these and many will do most of the basic tasks that a laptop can do. The problem however, is the lack of the input devices and hardware performance limitations mean that some more advanced features supplied by corresponding laptop class programs may have to be dropped in order to fit into the tablet environment.

Data Security

Concerning malware and other security threats, tablets are claimed to be safer when compared to laptops. This statement is very arguable. Most security threats are as a result of Windows operating System and not the form factor. Laptops that are loaded with Linux or Mac, are considerably secure and claimed to be free from malware attacks. On the other side, tablets are not so free from security threats as many assume. Currently, malware apps are uploaded on the Apple store and even Google Play Store. An example was the debated “Find & Call” app which was supposed to offer the service of aggregating and simplifying contacts but simply harvested data from users’ address books and uploaded information to the developer’s server which was used to spam users with SMS messages. The number of security breaches for tablets have become a concern that are as horrid as that for desktop/laptop based operating systems; especially with the concept of “jailbreaking” devices which allow third party applications to be installed on tablets.

External Devices

Tablets these days, are coming with USB ports or OTG (On-The-Go) cables which means they are steadily rising to be on par with laptops as regards external storage devices. Many tablets even now have Bluetooth enabled joypads and accessories which allow a laptop like experience with your tablet. But the question is if you are willing to spend even more money for that after spending so much already acquiring the tablet.

If you’re trying to decide between a laptop and a tablet, it all depends upon you and your needs. If you are planning to carry your computer for extended periods of time, especially to do light based tasks such as watching movies, picture slides and listening to music, the lighter tablet may be ideal for you. Writing out what features you must have in your device is a very good approach to making the right investment. Compare and contrast different products to see which ones have the specifications you are looking for. Only by figuring out your needs will you discover which type of computing device you prefer.